The Democratic Alliance accused the government on Monday of poor urban planning and allowing ”soulless slums” to develop.
”The legacy of the ANC government’s housing programme is mile upon mile of tiny, box-like houses, unbroken by trees, churches or parks,” DA housing spokesperson Butch Steyn said in a statement.
”President [Thabo] Mbeki’s contempt for golfing estates should rather be directed towards his own government’s housing policy and officials who have allowed these soulless slums to develop,” he said.
The contrast between South Africa’s prosperous golf estates and its low-cost housing developments, which Mbeki highlighted recently, is stark.
But blaming ”pro-rich housing development strategies” suggests he ”is blind to the faults of his own government”.
Low-cost developments are ”dusty and semi-developed” because the government has not developed them properly.
”It has sacrificed proper urban planning for the sake of cost-cutting, but allowed the process to become so riddled with corruption that costs have often sky-rocketed anyway.
”Much of the land used for prosperous golfing estates is no better in quality and location than the land on which low-cost housing developments are built,” he said.
Instead of integrated development with paved roads, street-side trees, sports fields, churches and all the modern amenities, the government does not get its act together.
”President Mbeki should tell his housing minister to look in the mirror to see where the blame lies.”
Low-cost housing developments are barren because they have been imposed on the people who lived there, not developed in partnership with them.
Poor families and communities are given very little meaningful say in what kind of houses and community facilities are built or where they are built. Their individual needs and desires are virtually ignored.
”Housing must be about shelter, but it must also be about creating communities. More recognition of this reality will narrow the divide between the rich and poor,” Steyn said. — Sapa